Spending on Traditional Drugs Drops as Specialty Medicines Rise

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Americans are spending less on pills
and other conventional medications for the first time in two
decades, and more on complex injected drugs, a study has found.

Use of pills and other non-injected, non-specialty drugs
fell 1.5 percent last year, according to the report by the
pharmacy management company Express Scripts Holding Co.
Traditional drugs are medicines like pills that don’t require
special means of administration or frequent monitoring.

The drop is a reflection of trends in the pharmaceutical
industry that include development of biotechnology drugs made
from living organisms that require injection as well as
expensive injectable or infused “specialty” medications that
require special care. Wider use of cheaper generic equivalents
of pills has helped reduce spending on conventional medicines,
even as total pharmaceutical spending continues to rise.

Express Scripts, which is the biggest pharmacy benefits
manager by sales, said it was necessary to put pressure on the
cost of specialty drugs and biotechnology medicines, in part
through developing cheaper copies called biosimilars or
biogenerics.

“Increased drug competition, in the form of biosimilars,
is necessary to offer more affordable medication for patients
afflicted with these complex specialty conditions,” said Glen
Stettin, St. Louis, Missouri-based Express Script’s senior vice
president of clinical, research and new solutions, in a
statement.

Total Spending

In total, spending on all types of medicines grew 2.7
percent in 2012, about the same as in 2011, according to the
report. That was driven by an 18.4 percent surge in spending on
specialty drugs, led by medications for cancer, inflammatory
diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS, and multiple
sclerosis. The fastest-growing category was drugs for the viral
infection hepatitis C, because of two new medicines, Vertex
Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Incivek and Merck & Co.’s Victrelis.

Among non-specialty drugs, spending on diabetes care took
the greatest share as medications such as Eli Lilly and Co.’s
Humulin and Sanofi’s Lantus grew by 11 percent last year,
according to the report.